Editorial Cartoon: Presidentkandidaterna som bilmodeller!

Bild: Teckning av Jack Ohman. Fler finns på GoComics.

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Kampanj: Donald Trumps ”talking points”!

VAL 2016 | Fotografen Lotta Härdelin på Dagens Nyheter lyckades ta en bild av Donald Trumps talking points från ett av hans kampanjmöten.

”Från den sämsta positionen i lokalen, pressområdet på Trumps event, ser jag Donald Trump röra sig yvigt på scenen. Han harklar sig, spänner ögonen i publiken och trevar efter något i sin vänstra kavajficka. Min kamera ser det jag inte själv kan uppfatta med blotta ögat.”

Bilden upptar större delen av söndagens framsida. Artikelförfattaren Björn af Kleen skriver:

Trump talar utan teleprompter. Ur kavajens innerficka halar han några A4 med stödord i svart tusch.

I Windham får DN:s fotograf Lotta Härdelin korn på kråkfötterna. Redan som fjärde manuspunkt: ISLAM IS VIOLENCE (islam är våld) eller om det står ISLAM IS VICIOUS (islam är ondska).

Överst på bilden kan man även se vad som ser ut att vara ”Beat the Caucus”, ”1 %” och ”show your suport for me”.  Längre ner står det ”Time Magazine” och vad som möjligtvis är ”Cripple America”.

Under raderna om islam kan man tyda ”Chanclor Merkel” (vilket möjligtvis skall vara ”chancellor”), ”Cologne” (d.v.s. Köln i Tyskland) samt ”Peru”.

Bild: Dagens Nyheter den 17 januari 2016.

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Politik: Wall Streets skräck!

USA | Elizabeth Warren är presidentkandidaten som demokraterna aldrig fick. Om hon kandiderat hade hon utgjort ett rejält hot mot Hillary Clinton.

Till skillnad från Barack Obama har hon lyckats samarbeta med republikaner. Detta trots att hon uppfattas ligga på sitt partis vänsterkant.

Om inte attityden hos republikanerna förändras kommer alla demokrater, inklusive Hillary Clinton, att få en svår tid i Vita huset.

Och om Bernie Sanders mot förmodan skulle vinna kommer han att få det än svårare med en republikansk majoritet i kongressen.

Warren har blivit den mest kända politikern när det gäller att kritisera banker som är så stora och inflytelserika att ingen vågar låta dem gå omkull.

Hon har till och med , enligt Katrina Brooker i Bloomberg Markets, hänvisat till Teddy Roosevelt, “her favorite trust-busting president, who took on the big corporations of his day”.

När man läser Brookers artikel om Warren i Bloomberg Markets från förra året så förstår man varför hon inte är populär på Wall Street.

Barney Frank, the former congressman from Massachusetts and co-author of the Dodd-Frank legislation, says Warren has protected the act. “She can raise hell and make clear to people they will pay a political price if they try to attack it,” says Frank. In particular, he says, Warren has helped make modifying Dodd-Frank politically untenable for Democrats, without some of whom Republicans can’t hope to roll back the law. “I think it is safe until 2016,” Frank says.

“A Republican Senate would not take up Wall Street deregulation now,” says Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, a watchdog organization that monitors Wall Street’s influence in Washington. “Nobody wants to be seen as siding with the big Wall Street banks.”

[…]

For Warren, the fight is definitely not over. In April, in a speech titled “The Unfinished Business of Financial Reform,” she laid out how she hopes to move her agenda forward. Among other things, she called for the breakup of the big banks; they are still too big to fail, she said, and bailing them out of the next crisis would cost billions. And she wants jail time for managers who violate the law. “It’s time to stop recidivism in financial crimes and to end the ‘slap on the wrist’ culture that exists at the Justice Department and the SEC,” Warren said.

An important part of her legislative agenda is the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, which she and three co-sponsors introduced in 2013. The bill is a modern version of the 1933 law that split commercial and investment banks. (The original Glass-Steagall was effectively repealed in 1999.) So far, 21st Century Glass-Steagall hasn’t gained traction on Capitol Hill, but for Wall Street, this will be one to watch.

“There are only two things I’m looking for from the biggest financial institutions in this country,” Warren says one cool spring night in New York. She’s standing before a packed crowd on the fourth floor of a Barnes & Noble bookstore on 17th Street. She’s come here, while the Senate is in recess, to promote the paperback version of her autobiography, A Fighting Chance.

[…]

Those two things she wants from the banks: “No. 1, I don’t think they ought to be able to cheat people,” Warren says. “Second thing, I don’t think they ought to be able to risk destroying this economy. Too big to fail has got to end.” The room erupts.

[…]

Warren isn’t the only politician tapping into the public’s frustration and anger at the financial system. Other lawmakers have been vocal supporters of tighter regulation. David Vitter, a Republican senator from Louisiana, sided with Warren and other Democrats in December in their fight against Citi. “I know it surprised a lot of people,” he says, explaining that he also fears the risks posed by large institutions. “Too big to fail is alive and well.” In late April, Bloomberg reported that Vitter and Warren were working together on another piece of legislation, this one designed to curb the authority of the Fed to bail out banks in a crisis. John McCain, the senator from Arizona and former Republican presidential candidate, is a co-sponsor of the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, along with Democrat Maria Cantwell and independent Angus King.

Last fall, Clinton tried to mimic Warren’s populism, declaring in a speech, “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” This was way off the mark Warren hit when she famously argued during her Senate campaign in 2011 that businesses owe some part of their success to citizens and to the government. (Obama echoed Warren’s rhetoric in his 2012 “you didn’t build that” speech.)

The Warren version is worth examining. It gives, in plain language, her view of American capitalism: “You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.”

Tidskriftsomslag: Bloomberg Markets, juni 2015.

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Humor: Tories inför EU-folkomröstningen!

Bid: Matt. Fler teckningar av honom i The Telegraph.

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Politik: Är det hjärtat eller hjärnan som avgör?

VAL 2016 | Republikanska väljare har ett dilemma när de nu skall nominera presidentkandidat inför kommande presidentval.

Antingen rösta mot sitt samvete för att öka sannolikheten att vinna presidentvalet. Eller rösta enligt samvetet och i slutänden riskera förlora mot Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump, den sannolika segraren hos republikanerna, ser idag inte ut att kunna vinna mot Clinton enligt opinionsundersökningarna.

Rent logiskt borde det därför vara bättre för republikaner att lägga sin röst på en kandidat som har så stora chanser som möjligt att vinna presidentvalet. Detta speciellt när kandidaterna, åtminstone för en utomstående, inte skilja sig allt för mycket åt ideologiskt och politiskt.

Men kärnväljare röstar sällan taktiskt i interna val. Ofta är det hjärtat som styr. Detta speciellt när det handlar om att välja vem man vill skall företräda en i val.

Här skiljer sig inte amerikanska partianhängare  från partimedlemmar i Sverige som skall utse t.ex. en ny partiledare.

Få medlemmar lägger sin röst på sitt andra eller tredjehandsval bara för att öka sannolikheten att partiet skall göra bättre ifrån sig i riksdagsval eller i konkurrens med andra partiers partiledare. Det finns en viss tendens till önsketänkande när man röstar med hjärtat.

Och med tanke på att den republikanska presidentkandidaten sannolikt kommer att möta Hillary Clinton i presidentvalet borde republikanska väljare kanske vara mer intresserade av matcha fram den som har störst chans mot henne. Men icke.

En ledare i The Telegraph har tittat på republikanernas dilemma:

On Nov 8, American voters will choose his new opposite number in the White House. If the polls are to be believed, Donald Trump is poised to seize the Republican nomination. Yet the “political prediction market” – a new index that factors in the polls and other survey data – is not so sure. At present, this measure gives the populist billionaire a 34 per cent chance of winning the nomination, only a whisker ahead of Senators Ted Cruz (31 per cent) and Marco Rubio (30 per cent).

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, seems preordained to seize the Democratic crown. As for who might have the best chance of thwarting her ambition to be America’s first female president, the polls deliver an emphatic answer: almost anyone except Mr Trump. One recent survey placed Mrs Clinton 11 points clear of Mr Trump; in December her lead over the property mogul averaged 5 per cent.

Put Mrs Clinton up against Mr Cruz, however, and her advantage plummets to 0.6 per cent. Confront her with Mr Rubio and the tables are turned completely: the young Senator has an average lead of 1.6 per cent. The message for the Republicans should be clear: if you want to win, then don’t choose Mr Trump. But the party base appears in no mood to listen, so Mrs Clinton must be the favourite to enter the White House.

Trumps kampanj hoppas däremot att deras väljarpotential är betydligt större än vad som antyds i opinionsundersökningar.

Det finns undersökningar som anger att den positiva effekten för Trump kan bli liknande den som Sverigedemokraterna upplevt här. Fer röstar på partiet än vad som anges i olika väljarundersökningar. Skamfaktorn är stor även för Trump.

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Politisk kommunikation: En valaffisch från CDU!

Här en valaffisch från kristdemokratiska CDU. Det lite strikta svartvita fotot av Konrad Adenauer signaler stabilitet och statsmannaskap.

”Med Adenauer för fred, frihet och Tysklands enhet. Därför CDU” användes 1949 i det första valet till Västtysklands Bundestag.

CDU kampanjade på att Tyskland skulle alliera sig med övriga västländer, inklusive USA, och att Tyskland skulle bli medlem i Nato.

CDU vann och Adenauer blev förbundskansler.

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Editorial Cartoon: Donald Trump och Jeb Bush!

Bild: Henry Payne. Fler teckningar på GoComics.

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Kampanj: Trumps förvånansvärt sofistikerade strategi!

VAL 2016 | Mark Leibovich på The New York Times Magazine har kallat Donald Trump för en ”one-man chaos theory”.

Men hans kampanj är långt ifrån oprofessionell. Det han gör och säger är väl genomtänkt. Detta blev uppenbart för Leibovich när han följde Trump.

”He campaigns in poetry in much the same way a wild hog sips chardonnay”, skriver Leibovich.  Men osofistikerad är inte detsamma som oprofessionell.

‘I’ve had much more than 15 minutes of fame, that’s for sure,’’ he said. Trump can be hyper-­solicitous of the press. His orbit is largely free of handlers and is very much his own production, down to his tweets — which he types or dictates himself. I asked Trump if his campaign conducted focus groups. I knew what his answer would be but asked anyway. ‘‘I do focus groups,’’ he said, pressing both thumbs against his forehead, ‘‘right here.’’

Getting close to Trump is nothing like the teeth-­pulling exercise that it can be to get any meaningful exposure to a candidate like, say, Hillary Clinton. This is a seductive departure in general for political reporters accustomed to being ignored, patronized and offered sound bites to a point of lobotomy by typical politicians and the human straitjackets that surround them. In general, Trump understands and appreciates that reporters like to be given the time of day. It’s symbiotic in his case because he does in fact pay obsessive attention to what is said and written and tweeted about him. Trump is always saying that so-and-so TV pundit ‘‘spoke very nicely’’ about him on some morning show and that some other writer ‘‘who used to kill me’’ has now come around to ‘‘loving me.’’ There is a ‘‘Truman Show’’ aspect to this, except Trump is the director — continually selling, narrating and spinning his story while he lives it.

With me, Trump toggled often between on and off the record, one of which seemed only marginally more sensitive than the other, but with enough difference to indicate that he is capable of calculating from word to word and knowing where certain lines are.

[…]

I asked whether he had ever experienced self-doubt. The question seemed to catch Trump off guard, and he flashed a split second of, if not vulnerability, maybe non­swagger. ‘‘Yes, I think more than people would think,’’ he told me. When? ‘‘I don’t want to talk about it.’’ He shrug-­smirked. ‘‘Because, you know — probably more than people would think. I understand how life can go. Things can happen.’’ This was a rare moment when Trump’s voice trailed off, even slightly. He then handed me a sheet of new polling data that someone had put on his desk. ‘‘Beautiful numbers,’’ he said, inviting me to take them with me.

[…]

But while populism is often associated with grass-roots movements, Trump’s brand of it flows not from the ground up, as did Obama’s campaign in 2008 or even the Tea Party movement in subsequent years. Rather, Trump’s is pure media populism, a cult of personality whose following has been built over decades. The popularity of Trump’s NBC reality franchise, ‘‘The Apprentice,’’ for instance, made him a potent cultural persona; the power of that persona (the frowning, pitiless boss) might actually outweigh the customary strategic imperatives (message discipline, donor bases) that the political wiseguys like to get all aroused about. In large measure, the core of Trump’s phenomenon is his celebrity itself, which, in today’s America, is in fact as populist as it gets.

[…]

Trump makes no attempt to cloak his love of fame and, admirably, will not traffic in that tiresome politicians’ notion that his campaign is ‘‘not about me, it’s about you.’’ The ease with which Trump exhibits, and inhabits, his self-­regard is not only central to his ‘‘brand’’ but also highlights a kind of honesty about him. He can even seem hostile to any notion of himself as humble servant — that example of mod­esty that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln strove for.

The idea of a president as Everyman stands at odds with his glamorized vision for the nation. The president should be a man apart, exceptional and resplendent in every way. ‘‘Jimmy Carter used to get off Air Force One carrying his luggage,’’ Trump said. ‘‘I used to say, ‘I don’t want a president carrying his luggage.’ ’’ Carter was a nice man, Trump allowed. ‘‘But we want someone who is going to go out and kick ass and win.’’ Which apparently cannot be done by someone ‘‘who’s gonna come off carrying a large bag of underwear.’’

[…]

I observed to Trump that I had never encountered a candidate who talked so much to me about the latest polls. He knew precisely why that was. ‘‘That’s because they’re not leading,’’ he said. Trump signed off by saying that he hoped my article would be fair and added that there was no reason it shouldn’t be. ‘‘I’ve done nothing bad,’’ he told me. ‘‘What have I done bad?’’

How do you answer that question? Trump might be the single most self-­involved yet least introspective person I have ever met in my life, in or out of politics. I’m guessing he would say this is a good quality in a president. It spares him unglamorous dilemmas. But it’s unsettling to encounter a prospective leader whose persona is so conspicuous and well defined and yet whose core is so obtuse. The Obama political acolyte David Axelrod has likened campaigns to ‘‘an M.R.I. for the soul.’’ If that’s the case, maybe the most fascinating question for Trump is not where this all ends up, but what his expedition reveals about Donald Trump’s soul, if it reveals anything at all. ‘‘Some people think this will be good for my brand,’’ Trump concluded, as deep as he probes. ‘‘I think it’s irrelevant for my brand.’’

Tidskriftsomslag: The New York Times Magazine den 4 oktober 2015.

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Front Page: Nixon vinner valet 1968!

Den republikanska presidentkandidaten och tidigare vicepresidenten Richard Nixon vann valet 1968 mot sin demokratiske motståndare Hubert Humphrey som var Lyndon B. Johnsons vicepresident. The New York Times toppade med rubriken ”Nixon wins by a thin margin” den 7 november 1968.

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Image: Hillary Clintons politiska ”bagage”!

VAL 2016 | Det känns nästan som ett helgerån att rada upp alla argument som talar mot Hillary Clinton som USA:s nästa president.

Men det kan behövas lite mer fokus på Hillary Clinton med tanke på att republikanernas freakshow verkar suga upp allt syret i bevakningen kring partiernas interna kamp om vem som skall bli deras presidentkandidat.

“And those of us who would sooner leap into an active, bubbling volcano than vote for Mr Trump will have to try to convince ourselves that really, she’s not that bad. Is she?”, skriver Christopher Buckley.

Well…även om allt kan se normalt ut i jämförelse med Donald Trump finns det trots alla en hel det att säga om Hillary.

Christopher Buckley, tidigare talskrivare åt George H. W. Bush, har skrivit en lång rad roliga böcker med politiska teman (t.ex. The White House Mess och They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?) som gör honom lämplig att ta sig an Hillary.

Hon har vid det här laget hunnit bli USA:s längsta politiska följetong. Och med så många år på den politiska scenen har hon också hunnit samla på sig en hel del ”bagage”.

Only last summer, her goose seemed all but cooked. Every day she offered another Hillary-ous explanation for why as Secretary of State she required two Blackberries linked to unclassified servers. Eventually this babbling brook of prevarication became so tedious that even her Marxist challenger, Comrade Bernie Sanders of the Vermont Soviet, was moved to thump the debate podium and proclaim: ‘I’m sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!’ (He has since backtracked, declaring himself now deeply interested in her damn emails.)

[…]

The presumptive next president of the United States is viewed as ‘honest’ and ‘trustworthy’ by less than 40 per cent of the electorate. Call us naive, but some Americans stubbornly cling to the notion that our leaders shouldn’t always look as though they’re thinking: ‘Which lie did I tell?’ Nor do we like to be played for fools, although this may seem a questionable assertion in the era of Trump Ascendant. Still, when someone who wades hip-deep in Wall Street money — $3 million in speeches, $17 million in campaign contributions — tells us that she will have no truck with the evil barons of finance, it’s hard to keep a straight face.

But never mind us — how does she manage? When you and your husband have banked $125 million in speaking fees from the odious malefactors of wealth, and you insist that you feel the pain of the middle class. How do you maintain the deadpan after you’ve cashed $300,000 for a half-hour speech at a state university — which fee comes from student dues — and then declaim against crippling student loans?

Small lies are often more revealing, especially when there was no need for them. Claiming, say, that you were named after Sir Edmund Hillary when you were born six years before he became a household name; or that you sought to enlist in the US Marines after years of protesting against the Vietnam War, graduating from Yale Law School and working on the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern; or that you dodged sniper fire on the tarmac in Bosnia, when TV footage shows you strolling across it, smiling.

And what — hello? — about that tweet last September about how ‘Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.’ Does that include the women who say they were groped by your husband, and the one who says she was raped? Pace Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman: ‘Every word she [says] is a lie, including “and” and “the”.’

[…]

Mrs Clinton’s flip-flop closet has reached Imelda Marcos levels. There’s the Iraq War vote flip-flop; the gay marriage flip-flop; the Keystone Pipeline flip-flop; the legalising marijuana flip-flop; and most recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership flip-flop.

[…]

When the latest version of Hillary was rolled out like a new product by her campaign apparatus, she was rebranded as a doting granny. What’s more ‘likeable’ than a granny? Unfortunately for her, the meme didn’t stick. But then it’s hard to look like a cooing old sweetie when you’re swatting away snarling congressmen on Benghazi and explaining that you’re suddenly against a trade treaty you promoted for years. None of this does much for the likeability or honesty factor.

Bild: Henry Payne. Fler teckningar på hans hemsida.

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